The title of this post may seem a little odd, especially as there are, in fact, no chicken barons in Dominica (as far as I know). However, if you read my last post then you know know how it fits in, lol. Either way, we'll get to that in time, first we have to go through the local news. :)
I don't have a lot of pictures this week due to two main facts. One, we've mainly stayed home. Two, I keep forgetting to pull out the camera. So, I've taken a few pictures of the blooming spring and the kids in order to have something to show you. And here there are:
I'm actually working on this post Saturday afternoon. The reason is that our Internet is currently out. Apparently there's something physically wrong because the guy at tech support assured me that a repair crew had already been dispatched. (If I had to guess I would say that some backhoe somewhere has cut a line.) You see, even here in the US the Internet goes out from time to time, lol. That's the latest news around here, I just put it first because it explains why I'm working on this now.
So what other news is there? Well, first off, Titus finally got to his “Is this child alright?” doctor's appointment. Rachel had gotten concerned because he wasn't crawling or trying to talk, so she scheduled an appointment for him. It got pushed back several times before she finally got to take him. Of course, by that time he had been crawling for about two weeks and trying to talk for about as long. The doctor took a look and said that Titus was probably fine, but that we'd take another look in three months. I feel certain he's fine and I thank the Lord for it.
In work related news Worlds of Magic is still rolling along. We're hoping to have people in the Alpha by next weekend. There have been a few delays, but I think the game is going to have been worth the wait. One of the things that may have caused a delay this week (although I'm not sure it did) was getting Strategic War in Europe ready for Steam. Wastelands Interactive (the company producing WoM) got the game put up for sale yesterday afternoon. It's still too early to tell how sales are really going, but we're all hoping for good things. The more money WI has to put into WoM the better. I would certainly appreciate prayers about it.
I also made a great deal of progress with my design work this week. We've nearly wrapped up work on the Sorcerer Lords (the pre-made characters you can use in the game) and have started work on the Titans (super powerful creatures). I'm hoping in the next few weeks to get through them as well as wrap up the Heroes and Champions. At that point all the major areas of my design work will be done. After that I'll just be managing the project and making changes to the design as we need it (as well as tying up a few loose ends). At that point I should have time to start work on my next project. What's that going to be? Oh, we'll get to that in another post. It may give you something to look forward to, lol.
Anyways, that's the news around here at the moment. Now I can move on to the “Chicken Barons” part of my story. So, just to recap the main point of my last post, it was: Dominica imports chicken from Florida while at the same time it has a large number of Mom & Pop (that is to say, small time) chicken farmers. What's wrong with that? Good question!
First, we need to consider the fact that Dominica has a fairly low national average income. That fact means that it's very important to try to keep Dominican money in Dominican hands. The country needs to focus on keeping imports to a minimum until it's economy is robust enough to take the strain of exporting some of it's wealth. You don't need to be an economist to understand this, it's just common sense. The island doesn't have a great deal of money (compared to the major powers anyway). Whenever possible they need to keep the money they have at home.
Second, we have to combine this need to keep imports down with the fact that Dominica has no choice but to import a number of luxuries that might as well be necessities by today's standards. Dominica is not in a position to manufacture computer equipment, cell phones, cars, appliances, etc. In many cases these items will always be imports. Even if every Dominican could buy a brand new car it wouldn't justify building a car plant on the island. So, their economy has to be robust enough to handle a certain amount of imported goods. This fact makes it essential to use local goods whenever possible.
Third, buying locally encourages local production. If Save-A-Lot got all its chicken locally more people would raise chickens to meet demand. The more chickens there were to be had the lower the price of chicken would be. The lower the price the greater the demand. This circle of increased production, decreased prices, and higher demand would continue until a natural equilibrium was reached. At that point the “natural” price of local chicken would be reached and “natural” demand would settle in.
Now, up this point we've talked theory. Let's talk a little “plan” in-stead. How would I go about getting local chicken into Dominica? Well, I'll explain. For the sake of this post we'll assume that all the stores in Dominica want to buy locally (in real life we certainly can't count on that, but we can run with the idea for now). So, all we need to do is get them the chicken they want to buy.
Step 1: We get the chickens. I feel that a lot of American's (I mean citizens of the United States) would want to do it the “American Way”. To do that we would buy acres of land, thousands of chickens, build hundreds of coups, etc, etc, etc. However, when solving a Dominican problem you have to look for a Dominican solution. The Dominicans don't want Dominica to be the US, they want it to be Dominica with more cash, lol.
So, how do we get chickens? We simply do the opposite of what they do with Bananas, Fish, Bread, or whatever they happen to be selling. We take a truck and put a chicken wire cage on the back of it. Then we park by the bus stop in Soufriere (or wherever) and offer X EC (X being an appropriate amount) per pound of live chicken. We weigh and pay right by the truck and we let everyone in town know we'll be back the same time next week.
Now, at first we almost certainly wouldn't be able to buy enough chickens to fill demand. There simply aren't enough chickens being raised on the island. However, after a few months of everyone knowing they could get extra cash just by raising a few chickens in the back yard, production would really increase. (You'd do it, wouldn't you Josian?) Every eight year old that wanted to save up for an iPhone would be raising his or her own little flock of chickens. Before long the island would be meeting it's own demand and wouldn't be importing chicken all. Oddly enough, up to this point the Dominicans wouldn't have actually “made any money”, but would merely be keeping what they had in the first place.
It's essentially free to raise chickens in Dominica. You would think that fact would mean that everyone would have all the chicken they wanted, but it doesn't. People don't realize that work generates wealth. The Dominicans could eat chicken all the time for practically nothing, they just don't realize it. Either way, we'll move on for now.
Step 2: We process the chickens. This is going to take a bit more work than buying did. We have to get enough land to setup a small slaughterhouse and meat packaging facility. It needs to be up to at least USDA standards because we want everyone to know that when you buy our brand of chicken it's at least as good as any from the US (and probably much better) as well as being local. So, we slaughter them, process them, and package them right there. We offer a number of skin-on and skin-off products, whole chickens, the works. We package them on Styrofoam “plates” and wrap them in cellophane, just like any other meat processing plant would. We mark each according to weight and have packaged chicken ready to sell.
Step 3: We sell the chicken. Again, this is going to take a little more work. We have to keep in mind that we're going to need to offer both fresh and frozen products. As a result we need a truck that can carry refrigerated as well as frozen goods. We'll have to setup delivery routes and make sure we supply each of our customers with enough product, but not so much that it's likely to go bad before it sells. There's a certain level of complexity, but it's very manageable, especially in a country the size of Dominica.
In just three simple steps we've brought local chicken to Dominica. Of course, the actual implementation would be more complex (and would cost a fair amount to get started), but the concept is simple. Before I attempt it (which I hope to in time) I plan to put together a business plan. It will address points like where we'll get our trucks and what the best location for the packaging facility is. It's going to take a bit of planning to do right, but the point is that it could be done right and doing it would help Dominica.
Now, in truth, that represents nothing more than a very small start. In fact, there's a lot more that can be done and I plan to flesh out the idea in my next post. For the moment, however, good night from South Carolina!
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